Sleeping without Freezing
by HoldoutTrout
Summary: After undoing Pan's curse lands everyone (yes, everyone) in the Enchanted Forest, Emma finds she lacks some basic survival skills. At her wit's end, she asks Regina for help. Bed sharing, kissing, and fluff ensue. No Zelena storyline. Started for the 2016 SQ Week Day 5 Prompt: Sleeping.


Emma hated a lot about the Enchanted Forest. She hated the clothes, the lack of cell phones, not having coffee or chocolate or takeout, the way people looked at her when she made stupid comments or couldn't do things that everyone else could, but the thing she hated the most was the cold.

Somehow, no one had ever mentioned to her that the main feature of castles was that they were fucking freezing. All the time, but especially at night. (Okay, so it hadn't been summer yet, but it didn't seem possible this place would ever warm up.)

Henry seemed to adapt okay. He just piled on the furs and slept like the dead. Emma heard his light snores from down the hall and envied him as she shivered and cursed her way to sleep every night.

Tonight seemed like the worst yet. Her toes were completely numb. Hell, she couldn't really feel anything past her knees, and she'd tucked her fingers into her armpits in the vain hope she'd still have fingers in the morning.

She thought about dragging a pile of blankets and furs off her bed and making a little nest on the warm hearth. She'd done that a couple of times, but she'd gotten quite a few judgy looks from her servants-god, she had _servants_ -when they came in to light the fire again in the morning. She wanted to avoid that again if at all possible.

She had almost decided to say "fuck it" when she heard the soft creak of the door to her rooms and the soft (but purposeful) steps that signalled Regina was making her nightly pilgrimage to check on Henry. They'd mutually decided that, for appearances' sake, Henry would share rooms with Emma and they had an unspoken agreement about these visits: Emma pretended they didn't happen, and Regina also pretended they didn't happen. To make it more convincing, Emma also pretended to be asleep while they didn't happen.

It had worked so far.

Emma listened intently as Regina moved toward Henry's room, passing Emma's door as she went. Emma shivered-it really was freezing-as Regina paused outside Henry's door, then abruptly came to a decision just as her footsteps started again as she made the trek back.

Emma clambered from beneath her mammoth pile of blankets, shoving her feet in the general direction of her slippers, and pulled off one of the blankets to wrap around her.

She hobbled to the doorway and whispered, "Regina!" just as the other woman reached her doorway.

Regina jumped and gave a small cry, lighting a fireball, which thankfully illuminated Emma enough to make Regina stop short of throwing it.

"Miss Swan!" Regina said. "What the hell!"

"Sorry, sorry. It's just… is there a trick to this?" Emma asked, wishing Regina was standing a bit closer so she could feel more of the warmth from the fireball still dancing in her hand.

"A trick to what?" Regina snapped.

"Not freezing your ass off. It's not so bad during the day," Emma lied, "but one of these days they're going to come wake me up and find a block of ice in my bed."

Regina stared at her. "You scared me half to death because you're cold?"

"Cold is not the word I'd use. Completely frozen. Dying of hypothermia. An actual ice cube."

Regina stared at her for another second and then did the unforgivable. She laughed.

"It's not funny! I am not joking!" Emma said.

"And why, pray tell, are you asking me?" Regina said.

"Because you are the only person around to ask at whatever fucking hour of the morning it is and because I think if I ask my… crew… for any more blankets they might never stop giving me the "I pity you, you poor, helpless princess" looks!"

"Your 'crew'?" Regina repeated. She snorted. "Just how many blankets do you have?"

Emma gestured at her bed. "Not enough."

Regina took one look at Emma's bed, which really was piled ridiculously high with blankets, and smirked.

"Oh, you poor, helpless princess," Regina said. She walked up to the bed and dumped about half the blankets on the floor and then rearranged the rest, putting a fur on the bottom and another upside down on top, then layering blankets back on top.

"Try that," Regina said.

The pile was only half as high as it was before. Dubious, Emma slid between the layers of fur. Immediately, she noticed a difference.

"Oh my god," she said. "Are you fucking kidding me? I had the blankets turned the wrong way?"

Regina shook her head. "It's a miracle you hadn't already lost a toe or two."

Emma snuggled further into her blankets. She was never leaving her bed again. "Thank you. Seriously. Wow. This is so warm. I can't believe no one said anything."

Regina said, "I'm glad you're happy. I should go-" and she shivered.

"You should get in this bed," Emma said, matter-of-factly. "It's warm. And you're cold, and your room is like… on the other side of the castle."

"You can't be serious," Regina said.

"Deadly. I'm adding it to the savior job description: no one has to be cold again. Not on my watch. And you really should get to enjoy your hard work."

For the second time that night, Regina laughed. It was such a nice sound that Emma actually lifted the covers to the freezing night air and said, "Come on. Just for a few minutes, until you're warm."

When Regina didn't say no, Emma wasn't sure which of them was more surprised, but fuck it if she was going to ruin the moment by saying she had just been joking. She lifted the blankets another inch, and Regina slid into the bed, Emma scooting over to make room.

"See?" Emma said, her voice almost a whisper.

"I admit, I didn't do a half-bad job," Regina said, just as quietly.

It could have been awkward. They were… friends, maybe, but this was veering into sleepover territory, and that was… weird. Even so, if the blankets by themselves had been good, this was great. The heat from their bodies warmed the bed until Emma was comfortable, her feet slowly and somewhat painfully thawing but the rest of her warm and heavy and drowsy.

She fell asleep listening to Regina's deep and even breathing.

When she woke again, it was before dawn. The hearth looked completely cold, but she was still warm, still comfortable for the first time in weeks, and she was curled around Regina, her head tucked into her back, her arms loosely around her waist, the tops of her thighs brushing the backs of Regina's

She'd had dates that weren't half as comfortable to cuddle with.

Actually, Regina smelled a lot better than most of her dates. And didn't snore, which was an improvement over at least a good quarter of the people she'd slept with. Regina probably still had morning breath, but who didn't?

Her hands brushed over Regina's stomach as she shifted, and then the direction of her thoughts struck her and she froze, mouth agape as it hit her.

Well, fuck.

Her heart was frantically pounding, telling her she'd screwed up and she needed to get out, now, _now now_ _now_ , before she did something stupid and she was fighting it because she was pretty sure Regina would wake up if she tried to disentangle herself and, oh god, but Emma was touching her _everywhere_.

Emma was so busy panicking that she didn't notice Regina waking up. Regina turned over before she could think to move and brought an arm up and around her neck and kissed her.

Maybe she had morning breath, but Emma couldn't have told if her life depended on it. She kissed Regina back before her brain caught up and could warn her that something that came out of nowhere like this wasn't right.

It _felt_ right, and warm, and a little sloppy, Regina half on top of her. Emma's arms were still around her and she felt the moment when Regina woke up fully because she went completely stiff and then pushed herself off of Emma to sit on her heels, looking down at Emma with an expression somewhere between puzzled and horrified.

"What the fuck," Regina said.

Emma opened her mouth to say something, but she had just been asking herself that same question and had no idea how to explain anything.

"Um…" she said. Should she apologize? Clarify that Regina kissed her first? She needed to say something, and figured the apology was her best bet, but what actually came out was a pretty demanding, "Why'd you stop?"

Regina's eyebrows shot up. "Why'd I _stop_?" she asked. "Are you-" but it seemed words had failed her.

Emma could think of a few conclusions to that sentence and some of them she could answer. "Bi?" she said. She nodded. "Yep. Also serious, if you were headed that direction, because I was totally on board with the kissing. Crazy? Probably. 'Really that much of an idiot?' It appears so."

"Well, I knew _that_ ," Regina snapped half-heartedly. "You can't even make a bed properly," she sniffed, and Emma knew they were going to be okay.

"Guess I'll have to keep you around," she said, tugging Regina back down to kiss her again. They had at least an hour before the servants came to relight her fire and she had some ideas on how to put her sinfully warm bed to use.


End file.
